Day: December 20, 2013

Why is advice largely useless?

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If I followed all the advice I’ve been given and it worked as intended, I would be fantastically productive, perfectly healthy, filthy rich, and getting laid all the time. None of those descriptions seem particularly apt. (I exaggerate for effect. In reality I have read advice on all sorts of things. Most topics were more mundane than those I listed, for example advice on relieving stress or staying organized.) If people are constantly inundated with advice, why do they, by and large, fail to achieve the things the advice was meant to help with?
Good question.
Great advice is all around us.
Yet it is in many cases not effective.To minimize frustration & for good advice to create great results I find that it helps to ask myself 3 simple questions.

  1. Do I fully understand the advice? We have different world views and buckets of experience that color our interpretation of the world around us including the advice people give us. We can all listen to the same lecturer and have multiple interpretation of the key take aways. Our sound byte culture doesn’t help in this regard as clips and quotes can be taken out of context. Oftentimes it helps to ask the advice source if your understanding & interpretation are correct (If your lucky enough to have access to him or her)
  2. Is the advice relevant to me? We can understand the advice. We can follow through with action but it might just not be applicable to us. It could be timing. Sometimes I think back to advice I received in the past and find that it’s much more relevant to me now as I’m older.  It could be our physical location. Sometimes a change of scenery can produce massive changes in the effectiveness of good advice and in turn our own fortunes.
  3. Will I follow through advice with sustainable action? This is the killer of good intentions. Following through. Sometimes the advice takes us down a longer road than we would have liked to tread. Maybe a harder one too. Oftentimes we give up before we finish. New Years Resolutions are self advice that often die a forgetful death walking down this road.

Hope this was clear enough and can be of some help to you!

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Why is advice largely useless?

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Why is advice largely useless?

 

If I followed all the advice I’ve been given and it worked as intended, I would be fantastically productive, perfectly healthy, filthy rich, and getting laid all the time. None of those descriptions seem particularly apt. (I exaggerate for effect. In reality I have read advice on all sorts of things. Most topics were more mundane than those I listed, for example advice on relieving stress or staying organized.) If people are constantly inundated with advice, why do they, by and large, fail to achieve the things the advice was meant to help with?

Confirmation bias is my candidate for the top reason. People who succeed (and are most likely to offer “advice”) make up idiotic reasons for why they succeeded, mostly discounting the role of luck, and writing self-serving stories and “prescriptions” that are less about helping others and more about self-aggrandization.

More specifically, this comes down to an almost incredible capacity to ignore necessary/sufficient conditions for a particular piece of advice to work.

For me, a piece of advice that does not have an if… then… structure is completely useless, because my basic bullshit detector filter is a “there’s no free lunch” rule of thumb.

Almost nobody prefaces advice with the condition, “this will work for you if _________ and will not work if ____________”

The presence of that structure, on the other hand, makes me immediately take the person seriously, because they’ve taken the trouble to convert a single example (i.e. an existence proof) into a more general truth statement that is carefully circumscribed.

Also a lot of advice that apparently works does not work because of the content of the advice, but the sheer fact of somebody offering an understanding and sympathetic reaction to another person’s situation. That alone can be enough sometimes, whether or not the advice is valid. It’s sort of a placebo effect. It’s what people call “motivational speaking” as opposed to real advice.

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Top Job Bloggers’ Most Popular Articles of 2013

Compelation by Stephen Darori and Stephen Drus

Heather Huhman Heather R. Huhman: 11 More Things They Don’t Tell You About Your First Internship
lavie margolin Lavie Margolin: 14 Do’s & Don’ts for LinkedIn “Skills & Expertise” profile category
Meg Guiseppi Meg Guiseppi: Social Proof: Where Online Presence Meets Personal Branding
dorleem avatar Dorlee M: How to Tame Your Job Interview Anxiety Once And For All !
Sital Ruparelia Sital Ruparelia: 5 Networking Myths
Alison Green Alison Green: when should salary be discussed in a hiring process? (part 2)
Gayle Howard Gayle Howard: The Traditional Cover Letter. Is it Outdated?
andy headworth Andy Headworth: So where are the 10 hottest job markets going to be in 2020?
Career Alley Joey Trebif: Top 6 Questions Asked for Embedded Engineers During an Interview
Julie Walraven Julie Walraven: Top 5 Major LinkedIn mistakes to avoid in 2013
Lindsey Pollak Lindsey Pollak: Millennials at Work: Gen Ys and Ambition
Suzanne Lucas Suzanne Lucas: Want Happier Employees? Feed Them
Karalyn Brown Karalyn Brown: 88 Great Behavioural Interview Questions To Help You Prepare For Your Next Interview!
Sharlyn Lauby Sharlyn Lauby: How To: Follow Up After a Job Interview
Dana Leavy-Detrick Dana Leavy-Detrick: How to Follow Up After the Interview or Application
alexandra levit Alexandra Levit: 8 Bad Mistakes New Managers Make
Jim Stroud Jim Stroud: This is why your resume was rejected
Rich DeMatteo Rich DeMatteo: 5 Things Recruiters Hate About Job Seekers
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Cindy Kraft Cindy Kraft: The 5 Worst Things You Can Do in Your Career
Jon Ingham Jon Ingham: Qinetiqette qits – can it be true?
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Recruiting Animal Recruiting Animal: Revisiting Job Hunters – Jul 17, 2013
Eve Tahmincioglu Eve Tahmincioglu: Women, Work, War: A Guide to Toppling “The Company Man” Model
Hannah Morgan Hannah Morgan: 41 Reasons Why You Didn’t Get the Job
Jenny Foss Jenny Foss: Two different shoes don’t matter. Getting the important stuff right does.
Dan McCarthy Dan McCarthy: How to Confront an Employee Performance Problem
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Phyllis Mufson Phyllis Mufson: Goal Setting: Part 2 of Your Personal/Professional Success Plan
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Jessica Merrell Jessica Merrell: 12 Best & Most Ridiculous Employer Brand & Recruiting Videos
Jason Alba Jason Alba: Never again say: “I lost my job.” Instead, say this:
Mark Babbitt Mark Babbitt: “Follow Your Passion” SUCKS as Career Advice
Susan Joyce Susan Joyce: After the Job Interview – Keep Searching and Keep Interviewing
Donna Sweidan Donna Sweidan: What Is Career Coaching And How Can It Help You?
Susan LaMotte Susan LaMotte: 5 Reasons Recruiting Is Like Dating
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: 175 Helpful Questions To Ask At A Job Interview

 

 
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Stephen Darori is the managing Partner of 3XC Global Partners. He is the Lead  Principal of Darori Capital Luxembourg. Stephen has been the Chairman of the Darori Foundation since 1982.

 

The Darori Foundation is the largest  donor of books to Israeli ( and also South African) University, College and Muncipal libraries and has consistently been so since 1969. The Darori Foundation , given the decreasing demand for hard copy books in the 21st Century Digital age , now leads and participates in Projects to put Internet Devices in Every Child in Israel. In 2013 , $5 million was earmarked to upgrade the notebooks used in schools in the Southern Periphery  Towns within 20 kms of Gaza . IBM (Corp)  quietly committed them selves to  matching finance ( in kind) . The new IBM notebooks are purchased at almost cost to IBM ( substantially discounted ) . Lets not start a turf war in Zion between IBM Israel ( franchised sales rep and IBM Corp )  . Keep the later sentence as confidentiality as possible. Over and above Notebooks and other Internet Devices , free ISP services  are provided and have been upgraded to a 100 Mega Down-link.

 

Stephen is also the founder of the Start Up Nation Critical Canvas. This is a  Socio Economical Political Lobby to change the employment Laws in Israel and open up the Job Market  to High Tech People who are not Jewish or Israeli. the pitch is simple . Israeli Academia can now longer keep pace with the Demand of the Start Up Nation’s White Silicon City ‘s Silicon Boulevard, the Golden Silicon City and the Silicon Wadi’s demand for High Tech Headcount. This is an extremely difficult Pitch to deliver as all decision makers wear two or more different Caps . The pitch says let them work in Zion, pay taxes , enjoy all the benefits of an Israeli Tax Payer but never Israeli Citizenship unless they marry an Israeli. The Tax System for individuals in Israel is structures around an Israeli ID Number. No ID number , no opportunity to work in Israel . Medical associations have a boutique solution for non-Israelis living in Zion who require medical treatment

Personal branding

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Personal branding is the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands.[1] While previous self-helpmanagement techniques were about self-improvement, the personal-branding concept suggests instead that success comes from self-packaging.[1] Personal branding also involves creating an asset by defining an individual’s body, clothing, physical appearance,digital and online presence and areas of knowledge in a way leading to a uniquely distinguishable, and ideally memorable, impression.[citation needed] The term is thought to have been first used and discussed in a 1997 article by Tom Peters.[2]

Personal Branding is esentially; the ongoing process of establishing a prescribed image or impression in the mind of others about an individual, group or organization.[3] Personal branding can often involves the application of one’s name to various products. For example, the celebrity real-estate mogul Donald Trump uses his last name extensively on his buildings and on the products he endorses (e.g. Trump Steaks).

History[edit]

Personal branding, self-positioning and all individual branding by whatever name, was first introduced in 1937 in the book Think and Grow Rich[citation needed] by Napoleon Hill. The idea surfaced later in the 1981 book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, by Al Riesand Jack Trout.[4] More specifically in “Chapter 23. Positioning Yourself and Your Career – You can benefit by using positioning strategy to advance your own career. Key principle: Don’t try to do everything yourself. Find a horse to ride”.

It was later popularized by Tom Peters.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Jump up to:a b Lair, Daniel J.; Sullivan, Katie; Cheney, George (2005). “Marketization and the Recasting of the Professional Self”. Management Communication Quarterly 18 (3): 307–343. doi:10.1177/0893318904270744.
  2. Jump up^ Asacker, Tom (10 March 2004). “The Seven Wonders of Branding”. Forbes.com. Retrieved June 14, 2013.
  3. Jump up^ Creating Your Personal Brand – Los Ellis 2009
  4. Jump up^ Ries, Al; Trout, Jack (1981). Positioning: The Battle for your Mind. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-135916-0.